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Delivering smart identity verification in the 21st Century contact centre

Removing agent exposure to sensitive information within the contact centre can drastically streamline the customer experience. It also ensures that any information stored in your environment remains secure, drastically reducing the scope of your regulatory and compliance requirements.

Fraudsters looking to exploit your business are quickly becoming more sophisticated, therefore, so must your defences. Overall UK fraud cases have dropped 6% in the past year, but identity fraud reached a record level, according to the latest report by fraud prevention service Cifas.

Compared to sectors where verification and authentication mechanisms are well established, many contact centres are still inconsistent with their processes. This makes them ideal targets for fraudsters and cyber-criminals. This fact is compounded by the process being a mundane and irritating experience for agents, with many employees becoming complacent about their responsibilities. It’s also a drain on productivity – just as the need to simplify customer on-boarding and self-service has become a top business priority.

These commercial pressures, combined with the need to meet appropriate governance and regulatory compliance, has created the need for an automatic, compliant and resilient verification solution.

Contact centres are required to employ multi-factor authentication to meet regulatory obligations, including FFIEC in the United States and PSD2 in Europe. This second layer, be it a PIN, hardware token or something user-inherent such as a biometric characteristic, can thwart fraudsters who have gained access to the first layer of authentication information.

Incorporating fingerprint, facial and voice biometrics for enhanced certainty of service, can help contact centres create a more efficient, more secure business. Multi-factor authentication using either dynamically generated One-Time Passwords (OTPs) or user biometrics ensures that every caller is put through the correct authentication process, with no chance of a question being missed or an incorrect reply being allowed through. One-Time Passwords typically remain active for just 30 seconds, therefore social engineering attacks can be eliminated.

Delivering an almost invisible security experience, where agents don’t have to handle customer verification information, is where the 21st Century smart contact centre needs to be – so the agents, and the customers, are protected just as robustly as your business.